Babies and Other Hazards of Sex: How to Make a Tiny Person in Only 9 Months, with Tools You Probably Have Around the Home

This period is often referred to as the “terrible twos,” not so much because children this age start behaving any worse than before, but because they reach the size where if they swing at you, they’ll hit you square in the crotch.

The important thing to remember here is that your child is only trying to establish its independence. This is a necessary part of its development: It must learn to make its own decisions, to interact with the world directly rather than through the protective mediation of its parents. Your child must also learn that when it hits a bigger person in the crotch, it should pretend to be very, very sorry.

How to Discipline a Two-Year-Old

Discipline during this phase consists of choosing the appropriate Escalating Futile Parental Disciplinary Threat. A handy reference chart is printed here for your use.

Remember that when your two-year-old “misbehaves,” it’s usually because of his natural curiosity. It is not cruelty that causes him to thrust a Bic pen deep into the dog’s nostril; it is a genuine desire to find out how you will react.

The time-tested way to react is to work your way up the ladder of Traditional Escalating Futile Parental Disciplinary Threats.

The Traditional Escalating Futile Parental Disciplinary Threats

1. “You’re going to poke somebody’s eye out.”

2. “You’re going to make me very angry.”

3. “You’re going straight to your room.”

4. “I’m going to tell your father.”

5. “I’m going to tell Santa Claus.”

6. “I’m not going to give you any dessert.”

7. “I’m not going to buy you any more Hot Wheels.”

8. “I’m very angry now.”

9. “I’m going to give you a good smack.”

10. “I mean it.”

11. “I really mean it.”

12. “I’m not kidding.”

13. (SMACK).

NOTE: If there’s a real discipline emergency, such as your child has somehow gotten hold of an acetylene torch, you may have to start right in at Threat Number 8. But many two-year-olds also develop seemingly irrational fears. They get these from Mister Rogers. He tries to reassure his young viewers about standard childhood fears, but the children would never have thought of them if Mister Rogers hadn’t brought them up. My son and I once watched Mister Rogers sing this song in which he said over and over, in the most cheerful voice imaginable, that “You can never go down the drain.” By the time he finished, we were both very concerned about going down the drain. And this came at a time when I had just gotten over the fear of being stabbed to death in the shower, which I got from Psycho.

Recently, my son became convinced that a horse was coming into his bedroom at night to get him. The way to cope with this kind of fear is to allow the child to confront it openly. We took Robert to visit some real horses, so he could see for himself that they are nothing more than huge creatures with weird eyeballs and long teeth and hard feet that could stomp him to the consistency of grits in seconds. Aided by this kind of understanding and support from us, Robert eventually stopped imagining his horse, which was good because it was ruining the carpet.

So unless you want your child to develop a set of irrational fears, I advise you not to let him watch Mister Rogers. A far better alternative is the Saturday morning cartoon shows, which instill the healthy and rational fear that evil beings with sophisticated weapons are trying to destroy the planet.

Fears Your Mother Teaches You during Childhood

You needed these fears to become a responsible adult, and now it’s time to start passing them on to your child.

• The fear that if you cross your eyes, they’ll get stuck that way.

• The fear that if you go in the water less than an hour after eating, you will get a cramp and sink to the bottom, helpless, and possibly catch cold.

• The fear that public toilet seats have germs capable of leaping more than 20 feet.

• The fear that if you wear old underwear, a plane will crash on you and rip your clothes off and your underwear will be broadcast nationally on the evening news. (“The victim shown here wearing the underwear with all the holes and stains has been identified as…”)

• The fear that if you get in trouble at school, it will go on your Permanent Record and follow you for the rest of your life. (“Your qualifications are excellent, Mr. Barry, but I see here in your Permanent Record that in the eighth grade you and Joseph DiGiacinto flushed a lit cherry bomb down the boys’ room toilet at Harold C. Crittenden Junior High School. Frankly, Mr. Barry, we’re looking for people with more respect for plumbing than that.”)

Toys for Two-Year-Olds

Pay no attention to the little statements on the boxes that say things like “For Ages 1 to 3.” If you heed these statements, all you’ll buy for the first few years are little plastic shapes that the child is supposed to put in corresponding little holes, which is so exceedingly boring that after five minutes the child will develop an ear infection just for a change of pace. The best toys for a child aged 0 to 3 is a toy that says “For Ages 10 to 14.” The best toy for a child aged 10 to 14 is cash, or its own apartment.

You should also buy Fisher-Price toys. Not for your child. For your own protection. Every Fisher-Price toy has been approved by a panel consisting of dozens of child psychologists and pediatricians and Ralph Nader and Mister Rogers, and in most states failure to own at least a half dozen of these toys is considered legal proof of child abuse.

Another reason why you should buy Fisher-Price toys is that they are built better than any other products you can buy, even in Japan. They’re made out of some plastic-like substance that Fisher-Price imports from another planet, and nothing can harm it. If Fisher-Price had any marketing sense, it would make its cars much bigger and put real engines in them and change the seats so that real people could sit in them. Right now, the seats are designed for little toy ball-headed Fisher-Price people, which have no arms or legs (the Fisher-Price factory employees whack off the arms and legs with little machetes just before shipment). Consumers would snork these cars up like hotcakes. We’d forget all about Toyota.

How to Hold a Birthday Party for Two-Year-Olds

Not in your house. Outdoors, I don’t care if you live in Juneau, Alaska, and it’s January. You want to hold it outdoors, and you want the fire department to stand by to hose the area down immediately after you put the ice cream in front of them. And you want all the adults inside the house where they can drink in relative safety.

A Word about Smurfs, Snoopy, Strawberry Shortcake, and All the Other Nauseating Little Characters That You Swear You Will Never Allow in Your Home

Forget it. These toys are creatures of the multi-billion-dollar Cuteness Industry, which is extremely powerful and has influence everywhere. The Voyager II space probe found traces of a Snoopy toothbrush on Mars. If you fail to buy Smurfs, agents of the Smurf Corporation will mail them to you, or smuggle them into your house baked inside loaves of bread, until you reach the national average of 24 Smurfs per child under eight.

So you have to live with them. The only defense you have is to encourage your child to play hostile games with them, such as “Smurf War Tribunal” and “Mr. Smurf Visits the Toaster Oven.”

Questions

Starting at around age two, your child will start asking you a great many questions. This can be annoying, but you must remember that if children couldn’t ask questions, they would have no way to irritate you when they’re strapped in the car seat.

The most popular question for small children is “Why?” They can use it anywhere, and it’s usually impossible to answer:

CHILD: What’s that?

YOU: That’s a goat.

CHILD: Why?

Our son would lie awake at night thinking of questions that nobody could answer:

ROBERT: Which is bigger, five or six?

ME (confidently): Six.

ROBERT: What if it’s a great big five made out of stone?

ME: Um.

ROBERT: And a little six made out of wood.

Once I hauled out my guitar to sing traditional folk songs to Robert. It was going to be togetherness. It was going to be meaningful. It was going to be just like on “The Waltons.” Here is a verbatim transcript:

ME (singing): “Puff, the Magic Dragon, lived by the sea…”

ROBERT: What’s a dragon?

ME: It’s a great big animal that has fire coming out of its nose. (Singing)

“Little Jackie Paper, loved that rascal…”

ROBERT: Did Jackie Paper have fire coming out of his nose?

ME: No, he was a little boy, like you. Do you have fire coming out of your nose?

ROBERT (thoughtfully): No. Boogies.

ME: Um. Right. (Singing) “Little Jackie Paper, loved that…”

ROBERT: Did Jackie Paper have boogies coming out of his nose?

The point here is that your child will never ask you where babies come from, or why the sky is blue, or any other question that has a real answer. Your child is going to want to know whether Jackie Paper had boogies coming out of his nose, and whether you answer “yes” or “no,” your child will want to know why.

Preschool Programs

Near the end of the second year, most parents start thinking about putting their child in a preschool program, which is a place that has all these little tables and chairs where your child makes these pathetic drawings that you put on your refrigerator. Also they eat snacks and take naps. That’s the core of the curriculum.

You must choose your child’s preschool program carefully, because it determines how well the child does in kindergarten, which affects how well the child does in grade school, which is an important factor in how well the child does in junior high school, which forms the basis for how well the child does in high school, which of course determines which college the child gets into.

On the other hand, all the child will do in college is listen to loud music and get ready for dates, so you don’t have to be all that careful about choosing the preschool program. Just kick the little chairs a few times to make sure they’re sturdy, and say a few words to the staff to let them know you’re a Concerned Parent (“Anything happens to my kid, I come in here and break some thumbs. Got it?”).

Also, make sure the preschool doesn’t have any guinea pigs. I don’t know why, but somewhere along the line, preschool educators picked up the insane notion that guinea pigs are educational, when in fact all they do is poop these little pellets that look exactly like the pellets you give them to eat. You don’t want your child exposed to that.

The Little Boy and the Toad (A Child-Participation Bedtime Story)

It’s good to encourage your child to participate in making up stories. Here’s a bedtime story I used to tell Robert, with his help:

ME: Once upon a time, there was a little boy named John.

ROBERT: No. Lee.

ME: Okay. There was a little boy named Lee, and one day he was walking along, and he …

ROBERT: No. He was driving.

ME: Okay, he was driving along, and he saw …

ROBERT: In a Jeep.

ME: He was driving along in a Jeep, and he saw a little toad.

ROBERT: No. He saw a dump truck.

ME: And they all lived happily ever after. Now go to sleep.

ROBERT: Why?